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| Guess who's back... PHOTO: AFP |
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- 189 people died when their Lion Air flight crashed in the Java Sea
- Angela Merkel announced plans to resign as the leader of her party
- Western powers advocated for an end to the war in Yemen
- There was upheaval after Sri Lanka's President fired the Prime Minister
- Thousands of Google's staff 'walked out' over its sexual misconduct policy
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Leicester City mourned the untimely death of its esteemed chairman
- NASA quietly shut down the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope
- A giant of Hong Kong's literary culture, Jin Yong, passed away
- Saudi Arabia peddled more excuses for assassinating Jamal Khashoggi
- Hardline religious groups in Pakistan protested against the acquittal of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy
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| The American dream of exceptionalism. PHOTO: Fred R. Conrad / Guardian |
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On Tuesday, Americans will turn out for the 2018 Midterm elections. 39 governorships, 35 Senate seats and the entire House of Representatives are up for grabs. Whatever happens in these elections will have profound consequences not only for America, but also for its foreign policy - and therefore for the world. And it will come as no surprise that local races from Anchorage to the Florida Panhandle are locked in orbit around the gravity-bending phenomenon of Donald J. Trump.
The best-laid plans
Democrats would do well to read up on their Robert Burns, or on the Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke who foretold that "no plan survives contact with the enemy".
The Democratic National Committee, having spent well over a year campaigning on healthcare, must be watching in horror as race and immigration emerge as the salient issues for the Midterms. But that has not dissuaded Nancy Pelosi from appearing on late night television to declare, “We will win. Democrats will carry the House. If we have a bigger victory, the Senate, governorships, it’s going to be a great night for America". That's an invitation for divine retribution if we've ever heard one.
If one believes the polls, the Democrats are likely to win back the House of Representatives, but lose a senator or two. If one believes the polls. With the faculty of memory we may well be sceptical of clever pollsters and the media (yours truly included) who just two years ago displayed a manifest inability to predict electoral outcomes.
The mask comes off
If surrealism was the defining trait of America's 2016 election, we'd suggest that hyperrealism (the ability to fabricate something indistinguishable from reality) is what is driving this one.
Take for instance the 'debate' on immigration - particularly the migrant caravan. Calling it a straw-man fallacy would be wholly inadequate. Even race-baiting or dog-whistling doesn't cover it. A series of wilful lies has been repeated incessantly by politicians and spokespeople across the country. Now the rhetoric has escalated with a threat to strip citizenship rights from migrants born in America - a threat that has abhorred one half of American society and energised the other in equal measure.
The obviousness of the ploy continues to grow by the day: last week Trump wanted to send 800 troops to the US-Mexico border. On Monday that figure rose to 5,200. And by yesterday it was 15,000. Late in the week Trump toyed with the idea of having border guards open fire on stone-throwing migrants.
Usually we find that attempts to describe the current US president in Orwellian terms tend to be overwrought, but this particular narrative does have more than a touch of the helicopters-over-the-Mediterranean in 1984.
The issue of race simply cannot be ignored in this election. The black Democratic candidate for governor in Florida has clashed repeatedly with his white opponent over the latter's dalliances with racists and xenophobes. That vote is a toss-up. The same is true in Georgia's gubernatorial contest, where Stacey Abrams - an African-American woman - is standing. She was joined on the campaign trail by Oprah Winfrey, who said, "I’m here today because of the men and because of the women who were lynched, who were humiliated, who were discriminated against, who were suppressed, who were repressed and oppressed."
Previous elections may have been fought on what kind of country America wanted to be; this one is about who gets to be part of the American project.
The old world order
Racial tensions in America are not just limited to Blacks and Hispanics either. The fantasy of a grand global Jewish conspiracy has been muttered about since the 1800s. And dark corners of the internet have nurtured anti-Semitism for decades. Now, through media figures like Alex Jones and Fox News, these embers are being inflamed. Fox News, which recently topped US cable news ratings, has entertained increasingly radical positions and the people who expound them. And coded attacks on Jews ("globalists", "Hollywood elite") are constant. Little surprise then that the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire George Soros, a lightning rod for conservative disaffection, was the first person to receive one of Cesar Sayoc's bombs.
Anti-Semitism also clearly informed the worldview that led Robert Bowers into Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue where he massacred 11 elderly Jews. He explained to arresting officers that he was fighting back against the Jewish genocide of the white race. The residents of Pittsburgh placed blame for the attack on Trump's rhetoric, and protested against his visit in the aftermath of the shooting.
If anything positive can be gleaned from the pre-election reports, it is that more women and minority candidates are standing for election than ever before. In addition, a record numbers of early votes are flooding in from young and new voters. Democracy isn't dying in America - it's just horribly messy.
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| A ringing blow to wildlife groups. PHOTO: AFP |
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Tigers and balms
The pen is mightier than the sword, not only for us humans but also for the world's endangered wildlife. This week Chinese authorities swiftly overturned a law that banned the use of rhinoceros horns and tiger bones in traditional medicine. Beijing provided no justification for the amendment which allows the trade of endangered animal parts under "special circumstances". Conservation groups, aghast at the arbitrariness of the decision, are scrambling for answers.
It's estimated that 100,000 tigers roamed wild just over a century ago. But trophy-hunting, habitat-loss and the animal-parts trade managed to eradicate the vast majority. Conservationists pressured the international community into signing bans on the trade of endangered animal parts. This helped arrest the decline, and over the last decade the population of these enormous cats has actually increased. Even so, the current count is a meagre 3,900.
The situation for rhinos is equally dire. The World Wildlife Foundation argues that the animal is on the verge of extinction. Just this year the last Northern white rhino died in Africa; three of the five remaining species are endangered. Rhino horns are especially valued in traditional Chinese medicine for their purported healing powers, though there is no known scientific evidence to support the claim.
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| Now that's a big fella. PHOTO: Livemint |
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Statue of Unity
This week Indian leader Narendra Modi inaugurated a 181-metre statue in Gujarat - the world's largest. Almost four times taller than the Statue of Liberty, the new Statue of Unity in India was showered with rose petals (dropped from helicopters). The colossal bronze statue bears the likeness of Vallabhbhai Patel, a key figure in India's independence movement.
The man known as 'Sardar' ('Chief' in Hindi, Urdu and Persian) led non-violent resistance in Gujarat and beyond during the 1930s. He is generally considered to be one of India's independence Triumvirs, alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. During the bloodletting that followed Britain's imperial retreat and Partition, Sardar was elevated to chief of the army. In those heady, violent days Patel convinced 565 independent princely states to join his Indian project.
But not everyone in India is impressed. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi (a great-grandson of Nehru) has claimed that Modi is trying to lay claim to the valour of independence heroes - though of course he would say that. More important are the opinions of farmers in the area who've asked why a $400m vanity project took priority over local water and job programs. Or perhaps, the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir, two of the few kingdoms that didn't bend to Sardar's will: how do they view India after 70 years of strife?
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| Marrying for love. PHOTO: AP |
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The princess bride
Wedding announcements aren't standard fare for inkl, but we'll make an exception this time. On Monday Princess Ayako of Japan gave up her royal status in order to marry a commoner. The 28-year-old married a shipping businessman, Kei Moriya, in a traditional ceremony at the Meiji Shrine. The line for the Chrysanthemum Throne is looking thinner with every passing year. This story is also a nice counterpoint to the regular fairytale of young people ascending to high society by marrying into royal families.
Gluten-full
Eight years ago researchers in Melbourne developed a workable vaccine for coeliac disease. The aim was to cure (or at least transform) the abnormal response that one in 70 Australians has to gluten. Up until this point the only treatment has been abstention. Now the vaccine is being rolled out in the first major trial. This is a cause to celebrate for coeliacs, bakers and brewers everywhere.
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| Indigenous and black Brazilians have much to fear. PHOTO: Marcelo Sayao / EPA |
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A cruel and unusual punisher
The more we learn about Jair Bolsonaro; the more we fret for Brazil. Since the election the military has been used to crack down on anti-fascist groups in Rio State - a total media blackout has been imposed. Bolsonaro has proclaimed himself an acolyte of the late Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra; the chief torturer in the military junta. The new president's hero was a sadistically cruel man; one who would insert live rats inside the bodies of female dissenters. Bolsonaro also has three generals in his cabinet and has elevated to Justice Minister the judge who jailed Lula. Troubling times.
Stealing Hebron
Most of Israel's illegal settlements sprawl across the hilltops of Palestine, however one sits in the very centre of the city of Hebron. The Avraham Avinu settlement is perched next to and above the main marketplace in the old city. House-by-house, block-by-block the settlement is expanding as armed settlers break into and occupy neighbouring Palestinian property. Locals who fight back or try to reclaim their homes are met with bullets or detention. Now the Israeli defense minister has floated the idea of annexing more of the market to build apartments for settlers. This is ethnic cleansing in slow-motion.
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Quote of the week... "[I'm] happy to give evidence when a deal is finalised, and currently expect November 21 to be suitable" - UK Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab surprised everyone with how close a deal with the European Union might be. But, don't get your hopes up; in one of the quickest U-turns in political history Raab retracted the statement a few hours later.
Headline of the week... Tokyo garden loses £175,000 as attendant 'too scared to charge foreign tourists after one shouted at him' - The Independent
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